How language, money, and convenience shape a controllable society
Introduction
Have you ever felt that the effort you put in—at work, in a career, in a relationship, or at school—seems pointless, or becomes an unsustainable effort? Or have you noticed how things are getting more expensive and your money is getting less and less? Perhaps you’re one of the millions of people who suffer from some kind of psychological condition like persistent depression or anxiety. If you’re lucky, then perhaps your biggest problem is a constant and endless boredom. We put our best effort into a job and earn a salary that barely covers the debts, which keep piling up. Many of us choose to look for additional sources of income, but even then it’s difficult to stay debt-free. There are people who depend entirely on credit, or on social or family support, to survive. The unsettling thing is that things weren’t always like this.
A few generations ago, a worker’s salary could support a family, and it was even common to buy property with that income, something that is almost impossible today. One can make plans, but reality ends up destroying them or transforming them into something very different. It’s as if reality were a torrent that sweeps us away, at the mercy of nature. Or worse, perhaps that influence doesn’t come from nature, but from a directed simulation, where what we produce and who we are is worth less and less, or doesn’t even matter.
And this isn’t just a personal impression; it’s a measurable and understandable reality with mathematical tools: our work, our effort, and our money are worth less and less. This devaluation clearly manifests as a feeling of weariness, emptiness, or meaninglessness that some of us manage to drown out by thinking about certain things that still give meaning to sacrifice and effort… but not everyone has that luxury.
This contrast reveals the chasm in which we live: an existence that feels increasingly fragile and molded by forces beyond our control. Like in Plato’s cave—or, in a more popular example, like in The Matrix—but anchored in this very same reality. You don’t need a supercomputer running a simulation: much of this task can be done by our own minds, through the systems of control and manipulation in which we live immersed, and which we often drown in vices, distractions, or superficial satisfactions, or by getting lost in the lives—mostly fictional—of others.
I don’t want to sound pessimistic, apocalyptic, negative, or black-pilled, but these ideas have been on my mind for years, and have directly affected my life, my family’s, and the lives of many of us. While I’m sure I’m not the first to talk about this, it’s also true that I haven’t heard enough about it. It’s a silent epidemic we all share. And while the possibility of changing the world is low, I believe that making changes at the individual, family, and community levels can make the difference between having a life based on reality—with all its rough edges and complexities—or living in a flat, superficial illusion, devoid of meaning and gnawing at our souls.
There are surely more people out there who share this perspective. Or maybe you just think I’m crazy… or worse. I’m sure I’ll end up hearing a lot of opinions if this goes well. I’m not trying to revolutionize or change the world either. The idea behind this is more about sharing ideas and critiques that I consider relevant. And while many of these are beyond us as individuals, I believe that, precisely from our individuality, we can build tools to navigate this “torrent.” Because, even if we try to control it, in the end, nature is always in charge.
Chapter I: Language, Fog and Power
George Orwell, in his famous novel 1984—which is truly worth reading and studying—warned us that power is not only wielded with weapons, but also with words. Inspired by dystopias like We, by Yevgeny Zamyatin, and The Machine Stops, by E. M. Forster, he created concepts such as Newspeak, which limits thought; Doublethink, which normalizes contradictions like “war is peace”—and which has a certain connection to the “doble sentido” (“double meaning”) characteristic of Mexican humor; and Thoughtcrime, which punishes dissenting or “dangerous” ideas.
On the other hand, Aldous Huxley proposed in Brave New World that this manipulation and control of the mind, body, and labor would not necessarily be imposed by force, but rather disguised as something much more attractive and desired by everyone. We will desire and seek manipulation, control, and authoritarianism; we will become addicted to them. The government won’t need to force us to install a spying and surveillance device in our homes; instead, we citizens will voluntarily carry it in our pockets and willingly share every detail of our lives. Everything seems to indicate that reality has taken the best of both dystopias to shape our present.
And despite what we prefer to think, the manipulation of language and thought doesn’t exist only in fiction. It’s a phenomenon present in many episodes of our history and is more alive than ever in the political and social landscape, both nationally and internationally.
In Mexico, one only needs to listen to politicians or the mass media—suspiciously aligned with the federal government—to recognize it. Massacres become “isolated incidents” or “gang fights”; the disappeared are “missing persons”; armed confrontations are called “group realignments”; and the most effective way to discriminate is under the guise of inclusivity or diversity. The real violence under which the country lives is overshadowed by fabricated or decontextualized problems, always orchestrated. “Verbal violence” takes center stage, relegating the only real violence—physical violence—to a couple of paragraphs hidden among manipulated figures, advertising, and propaganda.
There is an attempt to prohibit, limit, or stigmatize the use of certain words, music, films, or even memes (basically, ideas), as if this could also censor reality and mold thought. And the chilling thing is that it seems to work very well on many people—I would venture to say on most—pushing the idea that truth comes from power, from above, reminding us once again of Orwell with his “2 + 2 = 5.”
In economic matters, indebtedness and vote-buying are presented as “inclusive growth” or “social justice.” Even the official security slogan—”hugs, not bullets”—functions as a rhetorical formula in a country with nearly half a million violent deaths directly linked to organized crime since 2006, and where the last federal elections were marred by more than 35 political assassinations of candidates across the nation.
Words like “people,” “diversity,” “well-being,” “equality,” or “inclusion,” which sound good and seem appropriate, become emotional catch-alls devoid of content, as well as weapons of repression and censorship. Language under this system doesn’t describe: it anesthetizes, deceives, manipulates, and poisons. And in this erosion of words, our capacity to see and orient ourselves in reality, to understand other ways of thinking, other perspectives—which I believe may be much more firmly rooted in truth—is also eroded.
Chapter II : Economy and the Shadows
The global economy is a shadow play, detached from natural and human resources. Money is no longer backed by gold, precious metals, production, or development, but by the ultimate power: force, or at least its subtle threat. The monopoly on state violence, backed by military and nuclear threats, sustains the system. It is based on faith in its future acceptance and fear of the consequences of rejecting it. If one wants to sound optimistic, one could say that the economy is based on “trust in our neighbors to the north.”
Between 1870 and 1914, the major Western economies (UK, France, USA, Germany) pegged their currencies to a value in gold (a stable and durable precious metal with intrinsic and almost universal value). This provided stability: you could convert your banknotes into gold at the central bank. During the First World War, countries suspended convertibility to finance war spending through massive banknote issuance. After the war, they attempted to restore the gold standard, but with already unbalanced economies.
Mexico was historically a key producer of silver, and for a long time Mexican coins (reales, silver pesos) circulated worldwide as “hard” money. Until the beginning of the 20th century, metallic convertibility still existed, although weakened by political instability and the Revolution.
In 1929, during the Great Depression, the crisis led many countries to abandon the gold standard again in order to print money and “stimulate” the economy. The United Kingdom abandoned it in 1931, and the United States in 1933 even prohibited citizens from owning gold and forced them to sell it to the government. In Mexico, with the nationalization of strategic sectors and the consolidation of the post-revolutionary state, the peso became more closely linked to international reserves and agreements with the United States than to the physical metal.
In 1944, in the midst of World War II, the Bretton Woods Conference was held in the United States (with the participation of almost all of Europe and its allies), where a mixed system was “created” or agreed upon: The US dollar was pegged to gold at a rate of $35 per ounce, and all other currencies were pegged to the dollar, but with controlled fluctuation bands.
The US became the “central bank of the world” at that time: other countries could not directly convert their currency into gold, but they could exchange their dollars for gold. This gave the dollar the role of the world’s reserve currency.
In Mexico, on the other hand, during the so-called “Stabilizing Development” (1940–1970), the country experienced sustained growth with low inflation. The peso remained fixed at 12.50 per dollar for more than two decades. This was possible because the Bretton Woods system guaranteed a degree of stability (dollar-gold) and because Mexico controlled the exchange rate with relative fiscal discipline.
During the 1960s, the US began printing more dollars than it could back with gold (to finance the Vietnam War and social programs like the Great Society). Europe, and especially France (Charles de Gaulle), began demanding the conversion of their dollars into gold.
In 1971, President Richard Nixon announced the unilateral suspension of the dollar’s convertibility into gold (“Nixon Shock”). This meant that the dollar was no longer backed by anything other than trust in the US government. The entire world had to adapt because the financial system was now dollarized. For Mexico, this meant that the foundation of its stability (the peso pegged to the dollar, and the dollar to gold) disappeared. Even so, the Mexican government tried to maintain the fixed exchange rate of 12.50, but the system no longer had a real anchor.
In 1973, fixed exchange rates were definitively abandoned: currencies began to fluctuate in international markets. In the following years, the US signed agreements with Saudi Arabia and other OPEC countries to sell oil exclusively in dollars: the petrodollar was born. This reinforced global demand for dollars, even though it was no longer backed by gold. Europe responded by creating the ECU and then the euro as an alternative, but also based on fiat currency.
By 1976, we see the first major devaluation of the Mexican peso in more than 20 years (from 12.50 to approximately 20). It was a symbolic blow: the illusion of stability was shattered. Between the 1970s and 1980s, governments resorted to external debt to finance public spending, taking advantage of the abundance of international loans (petrodollars).
With the fall in oil prices in 1981 and the resulting debt burden, the 1982 crisis erupted: Mexico declared a moratorium on its external debt, and the peso was brutally devalued. The 1980s were the “lost decade”: high inflation (up to triple digits), falling real wages, and the peso constantly losing value. The “new peso” was introduced in 1993, removing three zeros from the currency. The system was already entirely fiat, dependent on the monetary policy of the Bank of Mexico, which became autonomous inIn 1994, an attempt was made to bring stability.
With the autonomy of the Bank of Mexico (Banxico) and NAFTA, Mexico adopted an inflation targeting and flexible exchange rate system. The peso became one of the most volatile currencies in the emerging world, but also a laboratory for monetary discipline. Today, the entire system rests on trust and credibility, not physical backing. Inflation remains relatively low compared to the 1980s and 90s, but purchasing power has never returned to mid-20th-century levels.
Today, debts multiply endlessly. In Mexico, the financial cost of public debt represents approximately 12% of the federal budget in 2025, with a real increase of 10.8% in the first half of the year compared to the previous year. Inflation, projected at around 4% annually in 2025 (with monthly variations such as 0.27% in July), erodes the value of this effort, especially for food.
Work is becoming increasingly precarious due to automation: over 54.8% of jobs were informal in August 2025 (INEGI). And with so much regulation, wage controls, and additional taxes, everything points to this figure only rising. Paradoxically, humanity is producing “more” with “less,” but in our daily lives, we don’t see this reflected on our dinner tables or in our savings accounts.
The “free market” exists only in theory, a mythological creature: centralized price management, selective bailouts, monopolies disguised as innovation. The government only has eyes for transnational megacorporations, with which it makes deals and laws that benefit the power elites and their allies.
In 2025, megacorporations—detached from physical and human reality—control entire sectors of the global economy, subsidized by governments with trillions, while citizens live under the illusion of competition, trapped in economic dependence. It’s like believing a fish can compete against a fishing vessel.
And I don’t want to be misunderstood as anti-capitalist either… to begin with, I think this word “capitalism” is another one of those catch-all or wildcard words that are easily used to describe vastly different things, and its definition becomes vague and loaded with meanings that are hardly descriptive of reality and much more interpretive or morally charged from the outset. This doesn’t work, and that’s why I prefer to talk about free markets and private property instead of using a word that, I almost dare say, was popularized more by anti-capitalists (Marxism is probably the main culprit) than by capitalists themselves. In the contemporary political landscape, the word “neoliberal” also resonates as a kind of insult that has completely lost its original meaning; but it would be good to try to understand it before placing all the blame for the country’s problems on it.
Chapter III: Mexico in the Smoaking Mirror
In the context of Mexica culture, the “smoking mirror” is a symbol associated with the god Tezcatlipoca, whose name in Nahuatl literally means “black mirror” or “smoking mirror” (tezcatl = mirror; poctli = smoke). This mirror, often represented with black obsidian, symbolizes the surface of the earth and its capacity to reveal human thoughts and desires, as well as the dark side of human nature. In some myths, the mirror replaces Tezcatlipoca’s amputated foot, and its image is linked to the fertility of the land and the relationship between war, death, and life.
To the historical corruption that plagues our country is added the violence of drug trafficking or organized crime. It is estimated that since 2006, the so-called “war on drugs” has resulted in more than 450,000 homicides and more than 133,000 disappearances (according to conservative figures from the UN and the National Registry; independent groups assert that the real figures could be much higher).
What some journalists call a “narco-state” describes a country where authority and organized crime reinforce each other, blurring their boundaries. The news is endlessly repeated to the point of tedium: death, extortion, narco-banners, and shootouts are no longer news. Tragedy and barbarity are routine, to the point where they are not even discussed, or they are glossed over and sold under other names. The real catastrophe is not just the violence, but the numbing effect: living as if nothing is happening.
Surveys like Latinobarómetro show low trust in institutions (only 30% trust in political parties), and more than 50% avoid talking about politics for fear of reprisals or polarization.
Death and corruption are becoming part of the landscape. Meanwhile, nearly 40% of the vulnerable population depends on social programs (CONEVAL, 2023–2024), reflecting not only poverty but also a state that is omnipresent in discourse but absent in daily life.
A state that is not ashamed of its capacity to censor, manipulate data, and present selective, biased, or empty rhetoric, as we have already discussed. It is more concerned with appearances and opinions than with reality, truth, and justice. It grows shamelessly, consuming what little capital is generated in the country through the great effort of millions of Mexicans, on whose shoulders this monster rests, a monster that “employs” almost six million people (considering all federal and municipal levels) among officials, bureaucrats, public servants, state-owned enterprises, and social security, not to mention contractors and the surrounding economies (we can estimate between 31 and 43 million people whose economic lives depend to some extent on the Mexican state if we include direct and indirect jobs and social programs).
What sustains the country is its people, with their character of perseverance and cooperation that seems spontaneous: families seeking sustenance, neighbors solving problems together, citizens organizing themselves in the chaos, with or without the presence of the authorities.
The government tries to replace basic social figures, but the fractures persist, and despite everything, things keep functioning. We have—not always, but most of the time—access to basic resources and certain “luxuries” that are often supported by the same banking and credit industry that promotes the generation of simulated prosperity.
At a social level, the dismantling of these basic structures—primarily family, community, intergenerational trust, and trust in institutions—is progressing, while the most popular ideologies focus on amplifying divisions: political, gender, generational, class, and even racial polarization. Even intimate bonds are at risk. Large cities continue to grow and replace our understanding of a community where you know your neighbors and trust them. The alienation experienced by people in these hyper-concentrated megacities is palpable even from a distance.
We saw how, with the pandemic, certain areas of the country filled with digital “nomads”; And this phenomenon seems to have increased over time, generating tensions in certain areas where residents begin to feel resentment towards digital migrants who bring with them not only a different culture and languages, but also a socio-economic difference that turns popular neighborhoods into exclusive areas where preference is given to the dollar and it is no more rare to hear Spanish than English.
caused by the appearance of Covid-19 put to the test the capacity for information control that had been brewing for years between big tech, some governments, and powerful mega-corporations. A disease that, while delicate, was not exactly an end-of-the-world virus as some saw it, led to taking measures that for many of us seemed unimaginable or limited to science fiction books and movies. Politicians and “experts” decided what types of industries, businesses, and jobs were “essential”; a strong campaign of censorship was pushed against voices in opposition or even with simple doubts or very pertinent questions; the important thing was not to give more ideas, not to generate “fear” or “distrust.” Hundreds of people lost their careers and platforms, and many were labeled “anti-science,” simply for not following “official” discourses or policies. And the social networks were the ones who had control over the users and who pushed the corporate content, carefully selected and sterilized.
Even before the pandemic, another phenomenon was beginning to brew in this environment of information flows controlled by algorithms and power groups. It is not a new phenomenon that the type of content we interact with most and pay more attention to tends to be the most controversial, scandalous, and provocative. We are slaves of our human nature, which has its bases in animal nature, where risk and danger must be a priority if you are interested in survival. One cannot stop to doubt if the figure seen in the brush is a large feline or an optical illusion; the brain is designed to activate attention mechanisms to danger and act according to them. In our urbanized society, which very rarely faces these types and levels of natural risks and dangers, our brain still seeks them and finds them precisely in social, political, personal, and work situations; news or ideas—especially negative or threatening ones—become the new tigers in the brush that steal our attention, and the algorithms notice and know it.
Our nature of conflict and the tendency to understand reality from a friend-and-enemy perspective also adds to this equation, and we see the origin—or evolution—of the political polarization that we see today highly accentuated and established in our culture. Especially in places like the United States and Europe, we are starting to see a clear distinction and political and social polarization that crosses all kinds of strata and social bonds, from work and community relationships to the families themselves. Brothers or parents and children who stop talking over political differences. The propagation of negative stereotypes on both sides and the use of this same foggy wildcard neo-language to describe factions such as “left,” “right,” “conservative,” “liberal,” “socialist,” “capitalist,” “anarchist,” “liberal,” “democratic,” “fascist,” “progressive,” “feminist,” “colonial,” “communist,” “woke,” “racist,” “sexist,” “libertarian,” “authoritarian,” “boomer”… words that are used to communicate emotions and prejudices rather than truly seeking better communication or an understanding of a different stance—often not even opposite in reality—but we are so ideologically blinded that it is almost impossible to escape this political duality that pushes toward extremes.
Today in Mexico, the government is pushing laws that seek to censor even the memes and jokes that circulate on social networks and pushing ridiculous ideas that link things like the use of video games with the violence the country is experiencing; omitting, of course, the direct responsibility of the government itself in the problem, which far exceeds what something like a video game could have. While it is true that things like, for example, narco-culture have indeed also spread impressively and are extremely popular, attempting to censor these types of expressions historically tends to require increasingly authoritarian measures and a state of hyper-vigilance where freedom of expression is non-existent. Very similar to a certain story we have already touched upon several times.
Chapter IV: Convenience; The Sweet Sedative Poison
Huxley understood well that control could be voluntary, and today we see those manifestations with clarity. The root lies in the obsession with convenience—another way in which our human nature is abused—: that which saves time, avoids effort, multiplies productivity without investing more, and promises immediacy and easy reward.
Superficiality and overstimulation. The hijacking of our own biochemical systems. Multiplied socially, it costs us dearly… and we have no way to pay the debt. Language is emptied by repeating slogans and memorizing routes instead of understanding ideas, thinking, and reflecting. Why learn if Google and ChatGPT exist?
Technology—which promised us union, closeness, and cooperation—now seems to serve to increase polarization, reinforce trenches and echo chambers, isolating us more every day, radicalized and without purpose. They abuse our human nature, predisposed to pay attention to the dangerous, and push content that reinforces our views just to gain clicks, regardless of the consequences of propagating fear, distrust, guilt, prejudice, and hatred. Powerful tools, which in theory would serve for us to create and organize ourselves, are used to destroy us morally. Futuristic devices contrast with primitive control and violence. We live in a dystopia disguised as a futuristic utopia.
The economy looks more like a simulacrum than a reality: money is printed before facing natural limits. We sacrifice the formation of a family for a “professional career,” or worse yet, for the appearance of a “public figure”: thinking about the social profile before the real consequences of our actions or inactions.
Social networks behave like fishing nets: they catch us like fish and end up isolating us in echoes of familiar discourses and stances, ready to be packaged. Instead of the friction of discrepancy, true diversity, and real criticism, we surrender to the comfort of the familiar.
We surrendered values, money, effort, institutions, and bonds for the immediate. Resisting the difficult—real work, discipline, community—seems less attractive. But convenience charges its price with dependence and authoritarianism, fragility and loss of meaning.
Centuries of religion offered a transcendent moral through individual sacrifice, the promotion of virtues, and the rejection of vices. Today, when rational utopias and castles in the air begin to fall, nature reminds us—as in Michael Crichton’s Jurassic Park (or the movie, if you’re not such a nerd)—that we do not have control, and that she always “finds a way.” That way seems to be precisely those cracks that open in our society: the spaces through which life and truth still push to make their way.
In its beginnings, after the initial introduction of internet technology to the civilian population, the digital world seemed to be a new unexplored horizon, ready to be explored and exploited. Lists of websites classified by categories were the closest thing to a search engine like Google. Forums and comment sections began to be seen that allowed a level of interaction never seen before and very different from radio, television, or even newspapers or correspondence. Now emails promised to save us hours or days that we had to wait to get important news. Although there were some sites that sought to be a kind of home page, the rest of the web was a wild territory and very little regulated or controlled.
Eventually, demands began to fall on website users, their webmasters, the company owning the site, and even the data centers that provided the servers. And in light of this, terms and conditions began to change. Governments began to put greater regulations, and large corporate media began to look for ways to recover a market that found in the internet a way to obtain information in a very different way, apparently without filters, from the source, and much more authentic than that provided by news programs. A single person was capable of creating a low-budget radio program and reaching the same amount of listeners or even more than the largest media outlets… And obviously this diversity of opinions was also fertile ground for conspiracy theories and an excess of information that easily became noise.
Although it was a fairly organic and staggered process, with the integration of certain types of websites that began to retain the user and sought to centralize various services and functions—previously offered by different companies but now conveniently packaged into something attractive, practical, and even addictive—social networks arrived to transform the way people interact with the internet. And under these proprietary platforms, controlled by third-party interests, the control of information began to be something much easier for certain governments and power groups. We observe how many new and independent media were quickly displaced and replaced again by these corporate mass media outlets that were being displaced.
During 2020, the international stir caused by the appearance of Covid-19 put to the test the capacity for information control that had been brewing for years between big tech, some governments, and powerful mega-corporations. A disease that, while delicate, was not exactly an end-of-the-world virus as some saw it, led to taking measures that for many of us seemed unimaginable or limited to science fiction books and movies. Politicians and “experts” decided what types of industries, businesses, and jobs were “essential”; a strong campaign of censorship was pushed against voices in opposition or even with simple doubts or very pertinent questions; the important thing was not to give more ideas, not to generate “fear” or “distrust.” Hundreds of people lost their careers and platforms, and many were labeled “anti-science,” simply for not following “official” discourses or policies. And the social networks were the ones who had control over the users and who pushed the corporate content, carefully selected and sterilized.
Even before the pandemic, another phenomenon was beginning to brew in this environment of information flows controlled by algorithms and power groups. It is not a new phenomenon that the type of content we interact with most and pay more attention to tends to be the most controversial, scandalous, and provocative. We are slaves of our human nature, which has its bases in animal nature, where risk and danger must be a priority if you are interested in survival. One cannot stop to doubt if the figure seen in the brush is a large feline or an optical illusion; the brain is designed to activate attention mechanisms to danger and act according to them. In our urbanized society, which very rarely faces these types and levels of natural risks and dangers, our brain still seeks them and finds them precisely in social, political, personal, and work situations; news or ideas—especially negative or threatening ones—become the new tigers in the brush that steal our attention, and the algorithms notice and know it.
Our nature of conflict and the tendency to understand reality from a friend-and-enemy perspective also adds to this equation, and we see the origin—or evolution—of the political polarization that we see today highly accentuated and established in our culture. Especially in places like the United States and Europe, we are starting to see a clear distinction and political and social polarization that crosses all kinds of strata and social bonds, from work and community relationships to the families themselves. Brothers or parents and children who stop talking over political differences. The propagation of negative stereotypes on both sides and the use of this same foggy wildcard neo-language to describe factions such as “left,” “right,” “conservative,” “liberal,” “socialist,” “capitalist,” “anarchist,” “liberal,” “democratic,” “fascist,” “progressive,” “feminist,” “colonial,” “communist,” “woke,” “racist,” “sexist,” “libertarian,” “authoritarian,” “boomer”… words that are used to communicate emotions and prejudices rather than truly seeking better communication or an understanding of a different stance—often not even opposite in reality—but we are so ideologically blinded that it is almost impossible to escape this political duality that pushes toward extremes.
Today in Mexico, the government is pushing laws that seek to censor even the memes and jokes that circulate on social networks and pushing ridiculous ideas that link things like the use of video games with the violence the country is experiencing; omitting, of course, the direct responsibility of the government itself in the problem, which far exceeds what something like a video game could have. While it is true that things like, for example, narco-culture have indeed also spread impressively and are extremely popular, attempting to censor these types of expressions historically tends to require increasingly authoritarian measures and a state of hyper-vigilance where freedom of expression is non-existent. Very similar to a certain story we have already touched upon several times.
Another topic of great importance that I will deliberately not address here is the impact of smartphones and how these have replaced personal computers, while the free and open internet has been replaced by social networks and now LLMs are added… and how these technologies transform our minds and affect certain vulnerable populations in particular, such as adolescents, in a particularly effective way. We will address these topics in greater depth in another essay.
Conclusion: Thinking as Resistance
I am concerned by the normalization of this broken system. As a phrase associated with Solzhenitsyn says: “They My concern extends beyond the broken system itself, encompassing its normalization and acceptance as an inevitable and permanent phenomenon. The fact that so many people applaud and accept lies, manipulation, and authoritarianism as the best possible path. We have accepted the charade—or at least a large part of us seems to have. It reminds me of a certain phrase associated with Solzhenitsyn (I believe the original author was a prisoner whom Alexander interviewed) that says, “They lie, and they know that we know they lie, and yet they keep lying and we keep listening to their lies.”
And then the questions arise: What can we do? Are we in the hands of powerful and dark forces? Or will nature simply resume its course eventually? What can one do, as an individual or a community, when so many of these things are beyond our control? What is the point of all this? To complain? To criticize? Is this truly reflection and meditation? An invitation? Personally, I don’t believe in revolution through democratic mechanisms, much less in the use of force or violence as paths to positive transformation. I’ve adopted a philosophy of life that doesn’t focus on addressing what’s beyond my reach, and I don’t believe in tearing everything down to rebuild it—if anything, I believe that’s in the hands and with forces far more powerful than human ones, and I believe the foundations of civilization are much deeper and more resilient than many think—but rather, I believe that through individual growth and development, in giving meaning to the present from a realistic and grounded perspective, we can find new ways of inhabiting reality. Ultimately, it’s about something as simple and yet as complex as: How to exist fully in our times?
How to think, speak, and live where what is solid dissolves and words betray us if not used “appropriately”? Starting to make changes within ourselves and our surroundings can be a humble but realistic way to persevere. And the solution isn’t immediate. But a good starting point might be to try to reclaim language (and thought, consequently) as a form of resistance: to call things by their name, to name what seems unnamable, to see what is hidden, the code in the Matrix.
Recognizing the unchecked violence, the unquestioned economic dependence, and the loneliness behind screens are just the first steps, but necessary steps to fill the cracks.
We still have so much to think about and to name correctly. And I believe it’s a journey we’re only just beginning as a society. Personally, I’m going to try to express my ideas on this same “channel,” and we’ll see if the internet has a different opinion, agrees, or if my raw, unpolished ideas, not yet “polished” enough for “general audiences,” will simply get lost in the torrent of easily digestible information.
For a long time, we, as a society, trusted that science, reason, and power could answer all our questions and needs, even better than religion, spirituality, or philosophy. But it seems we were wrong, and now we must catch up. We live in a social simulation—not technological, but psychological and economic—sustained by language, convenience, and coercion. Certain power groups believe they control reality, degrading the meaning of words and conditioning our desires. Resistance consists of reclaiming critical thinking and conscious action at both the individual and community levels.
Once again, we find ourselves at a historical juncture where thinking has become an existential necessity. It means holding onto questions rather than answers, rejecting the simulacrum as our only horizon, and remembering that it is still possible to imagine—and build—another way of living and existing. Because reality still exists. And nature reigns supreme, as far as we can see.